The site has great design and UI. It’s responsive and looks great on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. And, what I really like, it’s all about the images.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I have tried to automate and sync social media in order to take some of the leg-work out of it.

I know, I know. You need to personally engage on social media channels to be successful – comment, engage, share and make friends! But if you do that on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., you’d quite simply have no time for anything else!

Pinterest, at the moment, offers us the chance to promote our work, webpages and sites in a relatively straightforward manner that is not so time consuming, remembering, of course, to promote the work of others as well.

So, what sort of images work in Pinterest? And how can we create some of our own to drive interest from the female-friendly social network?

1. Beautiful and sumptuous imagery

Of course, everyone loves beautiful images. And although beauty maybe subjective, most of us agree on true beauty. When your eye scans the Pinterest boards sometimes it’s the heart-stoppingly sumptuous image that really catches the eye.

2. Cut outs

Cut outs, ie. shapes on a white background, are particularly eye catching in a world of rectangular and square images. The brain can process shapes more quickly than photos and Pinterest is all about speed of appreciation.

3. Montages

Create montages in Photoshop or online graphics editors to marry two or more photos together.

Montages are not only eye-catching but they are also your creation and therefore unique.

4. Humor

Add comedy to your images by, for example, adding a speech bubble to a famous face (see photo of Putin above). These types of image do well in Facebook and Google+ as well as in Pinterest.

5. Text

When all else fails just type into an image, put it in a post and share it. If the message is pertinent and if the typography is creative, it’ll bring you re-pins, likes and traffic.

Here’s one I saw the other day:

The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google

Fun and clever.

6. Countries / Maps / Flags

I did the above image for a client while illustrating an article about the increasing amount of Chinese investment in Africa. The image proved extremely popular in Pinterest as well as on other social media. The juxtaposition of iconic shapes (country borders, maps, flags, logos, icons) work very well to capture visual interest.

7. Upright / Portrait images

Pinterest boards show images 190 pixels wide but, unlike any other social network that I can think of, it shows the whole image regardless of it’s height. So, vertical images will be bigger than the more common horizontal images. So, upright images will grab more Pinterest screen real estate.

8. Infographics

Infographics fit neatly into the portrait format I’m talking about as they tend to be long, thin and upright. They can also be read on desktop screens as well as handheld devices. This format works particularly well on Pinterest

What you can do

Are you in a niche that will work well on Pinterest? Sign up to Pinterest (you’ll only have to wait a day or so) and start creating a few boards. Make sure the images are eye-catching and mix your own content in with others.

And follow me on Pinterest, goddammit!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

If you are reading this on my blog you’ll notice 7 beautiful grayed out social media icons on the right side of the header which turn into full technicolor when hovered over.

I seem to be getting more and more traffic from these various social media avenues so it makes sense to fill up that empty space with them – even though I’ve always had them in the sidebar.

Think speed!

As you will already know, Google takes loading speeds into account when ranking pages. Also, I hate waiting for sites to load. So I wanted to create these header buttons with a minimum amount of HTML, CSS and, more importantly, HTTP requests.

Here I have 7 social media icon images and all of them have rollover states. That means there could potentially be 14 HTTP requests for images just for these little buttons. The images themselves maybe small but it’s the separate requests to get the images that can severely increase page load.

So how do we cut down those image requests? Simple, by creating one big image.

Say hello to my best friend – the image sprite

Here is the image sprite I used to create the social media buttons and their hover states:

As you can see a sprite is one big image that can be shifted around to only display parts of it at particular times. Here each button is 32 pixels by 32 pixels. They are put right next to each other so that there is no space in between – this makes it easier later on when you do the CSS positioning.

HTML for the social media buttons

As I’m using the Genesis theme for WordPress (that’s an affiliate link), I enter the HTML into a text header widget.

Here is the HTML:

<div id="head-soc">
<ul>
<li id="g"><a href="">Google+</a></li>
<li id="rss"><a href="">RSS Feed</a> </li>
<li id="sub"><a href="">Subscribe</a></li>
<li id="fb"><a href="">Facebook</a></li>
<li id="twit"><a href="">Twitter</a></li>
<li id="li"><a href="">LinkedIn</a></li>
<li id="youtube"><a href="">YouTube</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

As you can see that is just a simple HTML list for each social media item and each list element has it’s own ID (this is for the CSS positioning). I’ve taken the links and the titles out so you can see what’s going on.

CSS for the social media buttons

And now here comes the clever bit.

#head-soc ul li {list-style :none; padding: 0 0 0 12px; float: right;}
#head-soc ul li a {text-indent: -9999px; font-size: 0; line-height: 0; overflow: hidden ; height: 32px; width: 32px ;border: 0; background: url(images/social-media.gif) no-repeat; display: block;}

#head-soc li#g a {background-position: 0px 0px;}
#head-soc li#g a:hover {background-position: 0px -32px;}

#head-soc li#rss a {background-position: -32px 0px;}
#head-soc li#rss a:hover {background-position: -32px -32px;}

#head-soc li#sub a {background-position: -64px 0px;}
#head-soc li#sub a:hover {background-position: -64px -32px;}

#head-soc li#fb a {background-position: -96px 0px;}
#head-soc li#fb a:hover {background-position: -96px -32px;}

#head-soc li#twit a {background-position: -128px 0px;}
#head-soc li#twit a:hover {background-position: -128px -32px;}

#head-soc li#li a {background-position: -160px 0px;}
#head-soc li#li a:hover {background-position: -160px -32px;}

#head-soc li#youtube a {background-position: -192px 0px;}
#head-soc li#youtube a:hover {background-position: -192px -32px;}

As you can see, the CSS imports the image “social-media.gif” just the once and then alters the position of the image within the 32 pixel square space to show the correct button.

Social media buttons in the header

So why am I putting them in the header when they’ve always been in the sidebar? I’ve learned through testing websites over the last few years that being obvious works: a big button is much more likely to be clicked than a small one.

When I find a good website, I usually look for the Twitter link. If I really like what they’re doing I’ll sign up for newsletters. If I can’t see where to do this within one second, I’ll leave, maybe never to return!

So, I’ll hopefully get more followers on these social sites – I’ll let you know if I do or I don’t.

Finally here is the list of buttons. Why don’t you join me in one of these places?

• Google+ This is the social network which has the greatest trajectory for improvement. Google rules the search engines so it’s going to try to push this social network as far as it can. I write quite a lot here, contribute to discussions, arrange hangouts and post my latest blog posts
• RSS Feed You can subscribe to all my blog posts by a feed-reader such as Google Reader
• Subscribe Here you can subscribe to my newsletter and get a free copy of my e-book “How to Market Yourself Online”
• Facebook This is really coming along, we’re having great discussions and I post my latest posts here as well
• Twitter Here I tweet out my latest stuff plus all the stuff I read everywhere. I can tweet up to 10 times a day!
• LinkedIn This is my LinkedIn profile. But I love LinkedIn Groups and I have one called Niche Site Marketing
• YouTube This contains about 50 tutorial videos about web design and internet marketing – more to come here soon!

What do you think?

Do you have social media links in your sidebar or header? How did you create them? What do you think of mine? Are they the right shape and in the best position?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

LinkedIn is a professional social networking site and has just surpassed 100 million users.

Nearly 60% of LinkedIn users hold executive-level or consultant positions therefore it has the highest percentage of decision-makers than any other social network. LinkedIn is growing at roughly one million new members every week, the equivalent of one joining every second.

As with all social media you should use the white hat approach and attempt to interact, engage and help the people rather than blatantly advertising your services or asking for work. Your goal with LinkedIn should be to establish yourself in your industry or niche. Make connections with customers and colleagues that you already have a relationship with and build from there.

One of the best ways of doing this is with LinkedIn Groups.

Posting links to multiple LinkedIn Groups

Here is my video on how to post links to multiple LinkedIn Groups to drive traffic and reach thousands of targeted professionals with one click.

There are over 870,000 groups on LinkedIn whose membership varies from 1 to 377,000. The majority of groups are business related, although there are currently 128,000 groups for both academic and corporate alumni.

One of my favourite groups on LinkedIn is the WordPress group. They are a lively and knowledgable crowd and have answered and commented on every question I’ve put.

Every sort of job you can do or application you use will be represented by LinkedIn Groups. I have joined groups for Illustrator users, Photoshop users, Mac users as well as some general design and marketing groups.

Are you on LinkedIn?

If you aren’t on LinkedIn I strongly suggest you join. As mentioned earlier, the people on LinkedIn aren’t there to browse through their friend’s photos, they’re there for business and networking. It’s a fantastic place to make connections, do business and learn.

Spend a bit of time updating your profile so it explains exactly what you’re about and what you’ve done. Make sure you get a few recommendations. The best way is to offer to write a recommendation for somebody you know and get them to do the same for you.

And hook up with friends and colleagues and don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn!

Other LinkedIn ideas

We are only really scratching the surface of what you can do at LinkedIn. You can use LinkedIn as a one stop shop for growing an audience and getting business. Here are some more fantastic things you can do on LinkedIn including optimising for SEO, adding video and running surveys.

• Run a survey to find out exactly what leading professionals are thinking with LinkedIn Polls
• Set up a company profile on LinkedIn
• Optimise your LinkedIn profile for search engines by customising the URL
• Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job by Guy Kawasaki
• Add video to your profile

Let me know

Are you on LinkedIn? What is your experience there? Do you have any other tips on how to best use LinkedIn?

Photo credit: Ravages

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

If investment banks can break the economy; small businesses can start the healing process. Now that start up costs are lower than ever, thousands of talented and skilled individuals who are frustrated by lack of corporate opportunity will do what they’ve always wanted and become their own boss.

However, many small businesses are using old methods of marketing – leaflet drops, advertising in trade magazines and cold calling. All of these methods are expensive, unfocussed and, ultimately, soul-destroying. Old marketing techniques fire their message from a splatter-gun hoping that something might hit home. New marketing starts a conversation with the customer. Oh, and the good news is it’s cheap!

So, let’s say you want to start a project management company. This is what you do:

Keyword research

So you want to be the first in Google for “project management”? That’s not going to happen. But you can research what other words are commonly used with those terms and target these phrases. Here are some of the most common search terms used with “project management”.

• project management software
• project management vacancies
• project management jobs
• project management exam
• project management courses
• project management tools
• online project management
• project management system
• project management training
• project management templates
• project management certification

This not only shows you clues as to what’s being searched for but also can give you great ideas for blog posts. But it doesn’t end there. Try all other words you can think of that are related to “project management” and see what people are searching for. These people are your customers! You need to understand them.

And search these terms in the ordinary Google search engine. Are there search advertisements running along the top and right-hand side of the organic results? If there are this means they’re lucrative terms. But, don’t get too obsessed with what’s popular, it may be easier to rank highly with phrases that only have a few thousand searches a month.

Pay particular attention to the long tail. These are long groups of keywords that are searched for only a few times a day, but when taken together, comprise the majority of the world’s searches.

Blog

I would advise all small businesses to start blogging. Why? Because a blog provides you with an easy way to create new content. The search engines love new content and it will drive targeted traffic right where you want it – to your site.

If you haven’t already got a blog, don’t worry about the design, SEO, domain name or hosting, just start one now and begin your database of quality articles because they will be your main currency in marketing your business.

Try to write at least one blog post every week of no less than 350 words. Here are some I quickly thought up for our project management case study.

• What to look for in a project manager
• How to find work in project management
• 5 do’s and don’t's of running a project
• 10 classic project management mistakes
• 7 reasons to hire a project manager
• 5 golden rules of good project management
• How to start a project
• How to define your project strategy
• Basics of writing a project brief
• The place of project management within the company
• Why everyone needs a good project manager

Remember, you need quality as well as quantity and you don’t want to run out of ideas after only a few months (as many, many bloggers do). So divide up the subject matter of your articles so that each can be covered quickly and concisely.

Usually we are too busy to write 1,000 words on advanced techniques. So start with the basic information which may be obvious to you but like gold to other people. The interest these posts generate will result in good links, good traffic and interest in your organization.

Make your posts interesting and easy to read. Here is an incredibly useful guide to writing well. Have fun writing your posts! If you have fun writing them, your visitors will have fun reading them.

SEO

Once you have your WordPress blog up and running it is necessary to perform a few SEO tweaks so it performs well in search engine results. However, remember, the best SEO is writing regular quality content.

• Put keywords in your blog title and make your post titles precede your blog title
• Put keywords in your URLs – not a load of numbers
• Create meaningful categories for your posts and write meaningful descriptions for them
• Put <h2> or <h3> subheadings in your posts
• Give your images meaningful titles (not “image01.jpg”) and descriptive alt texts
• Create an XML Sitemap and register it at Google Webmaster Tools and point to it with robots.txt
• Make sure HTML and CSS code is standards compliant.

Getting links

There are many ways to get links to your website. Here are a few:

• Adding links to signatures in forums
• Commenting on other blogs related to your niche
• Submitting to directories
• Writing guest articles for other blogs and articles sites

Social Media

Every different person from every different niche will have their own particular blend of social media. I can’t say to definitely do Twitter and LinkedIn – even though they have been of enormous benefit to me – because they may not be right for some people.

• Automate and sync up all your various social media in as many ways as possible. Putting as much stuff “out there” without having to waste your time doing it.
• Always answer all your serious comments both in your blog and on social media.

Conclusion

Use these methods in an honest, respectful and “white hat” way. Whether you are writing a comment on a blog or tweeting or leaving a message on any particular social site, make sure you are saying something useful. And keep having fun! There is no quick and easy solution to any of the above. It takes time to do and time to see the results.

As ever, I’m always eager to learn off you guys, what other small business marketing tips do you have?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

The job isn’t over when a blogger publishes a blog post. Indeed, for some it has only just begun. Many bloggers will try to maximize the exposure for each post through submitting the post to various social media sites. I will be talking about social media a lot but before that there are also a number of other ways I promote my site and posts.

Write eye-catching titles!

The most important thing about your blog post is the post’s title. Not only does it’s HTML mark-up mean it contains most important words on the page search engine-wise, but also it will be the point of reference on the various social media sites. So write a title that people will want to click on.

Make them short, snappy, descriptive, interesting and … put numbers in them(!) Strange, but true. People click on posts with numbers in the titles. My most popular post through social media was 10 things I wish I had known about web designing 10 years ago. This got 7,000 visitors through StumbleUpon in only a few days and the visitors continued for weeks to come.

Optimize your site for search engines

A well optimized blog will mean the blog post being indexed by Google within a few hours of publishing. Try Googling the title of your post the next day – it should usually come up on the first page!

RSS and ping!

Use FeedBurner to burn your feed so people can subscribe to it.

Use ping services to notify blog directories that you have published new content on your blog. WordPress is set up to automatically ping Pingomatic but you can add more blog directories to be pinged every time you publish – in the WordPress admin panel go Settings > Writing and at the bottom add directories in Update Services and Save Changes.

Other bloggers

Visit and comment on other blogs within your community and niche. I don’t mean you should promote individual posts in other blogs! Write constructive comments on other blogs and you’ll develop win-win relationships with other bloggers. If you’ve written a particularly good post, you could even email bloggers with good reputations and give them the link to it.

Discussion forums

Similar to above, participate in forums within your community and niche. There may even be a discussion where you could post a link to a specific blog post if it was absolutely pertinent. Otherwise, of course, put your blog link in your signature so it’s there every time you post on a forum.

Newsletter

Invite your users to subscribe to a mailing list and send newsletters to them regularly. This builds a community around you, develops a relationship between you and your readers and, if you inform them of some of your latest posts, it can drive more traffic to your site. Make sure each newsletter you write also contains valuable information that your readers would be interested in as well as links back to your best posts.

Email signature

Put your blog link in your email signature. You may also want to put a link to the RSS feed, a newsletter sign up page and even links to your profile pages on your favorite social media sites.

Social media

I left the biggie until last! All of the above are important for getting your blog posts noticed. But social media can send literally thousands of visitors in a way that will put all the other techniques into shade.

However, I would urge against spending too much time with social media and to treat it with respect and caution – engage with the community, don’t just shamelessly promote your posts all the time.

And, don’t forget to add social media buttons to your posts to make it easy for people to bookmark them on all the various sites.

Timing: I tend to do this in the morning UK time as this means the posts will gathering popularity in Europe and then America as the day progresses. I also think it’s best to do it on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Here’s what I do:

• Twitter: I was slow to get going on Twitter but I have got much traffic from a tweet! Encourage people to follow you by adding your Twitter link on your blog and email signature. Tweet your latest posts as well as other good material in your niche. Feel free to follow me on Twitter.
• LinkedIn: I look on LinkedIn as the thinking person’s Facebook. The key to LinkedIn is joining groups. You may join as many as 50 groups. So join groups in your niche and you can send your link to all of them at once as a discussion. Again, I would urge caution here. Make sure the post is relevant to the group and interact with the group personally as well. Used correctly this can bring in loads of targeted traffic. Feel free to connect with me at LinkedIn.
• General social bookmarking sites: I have profiles on and regularly post to: StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, DZone, Reddit and Delicious which are some of the biggest.
• Niche social bookmarking sites: These sites can often be a better bet than the big boys. It’s easier to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond so at the moment I post to WebBlend which then offers further links to CypherBox, FaqPal, ZaBox, DesignBump and DesignFloat amongst others. Posting to one and following the links to others means you don’t have to fill in all the post’s info multiple times which can get tedious.
• Other social media sites: Of course it doesn’t finish there. As there is also FriendFeed, Google Buzz and Facebook. But I think that’s enough for now.
• Form alliances with other bloggers: I get by with a little help from my friends. Sometimes it only takes a few votes to secure an prominent position on a social bookmarking site. So you can say to other bloggers in your niche, “if you think it’s worthy, please vote for my post at such-and-such a site” and send them the link to make it easy. I have created the Designers’ Social Media Partnership for this purpose – any newcomers are most welcome!

Conclusion

I’m sure every blogger has a little routine of what they do. I would love to hear what anyone else does!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

There can be a seemingly endless marketing job to do by submitting a 
blog article to various social bookmarking sites like Digg, 
StumbleUpon and Delicious. We can also choose to submit to social 
networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Also, for designers and 
web developers there are several niche bookmarking sites springing up 
like DesignBump, DesignFloat, Dzone, etc. The good thing about the lesser known niche bookmarking sites is that only a few votes will put you to the top of the page and can get you great traffic.

But after we’ve done this there is no way of knowing that our efforts 
have paid off! The article will sometimes sit on the bookmarking site with just 
one vote and therefore unseen by the majority of the 
site’s visitors.

Here’s where the Designers’ Social Media Partnership Google Group comes in…

Promote your fantastic posts!

After you have written your blog post you can post the link and ask people to vote, bump, 
thumbs up, or generally big up your post. Maybe you can provide the 
links to the various voting sites so people can just click away very quickly to promote your 
article. I’ll write an example post to the group to show you what I mean by this.

Using the universal “I’ll scratch your back…” rule, people will be 
compelled to vote for your articles if you’ve voted for theirs. You 
may like to send them a private mail through the group to let them know.

Joining the group is easy with your Google ID and posting on the group is as easy as writing an email. You are, of course, completely at liberty to vote for the articles you 
consider good enough.

Remember, this isn’t confined to designers or developers, any blogger who wishes to promote their latest masterpieces can join the group.

Happy blogging, happy voting and I hope you enjoy being a member of 
this group! Thanks to Brandon Cox for this idea.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

The site that seems to embody this transformation – at the moment! – is Twitter. Although Twitter’s growth seems to have leveled off in 2009 after recording a massive 752% growth in 2008, there no signs of it’s influence waning as this century nears its troublesome teenage years. Savvy businesses see money in Twitter: I recently tweeted that I’d had a bad experience with BT and, within a few hours, I got a tweet from them asking me what the problem was.

So if we have to engage with this social media how do we do it productively and without turning into some sort of anti-social geekia dullard? Here are a few pointers on how to organize your web-life amongst the blogs, wikis and social sites, create a consistent online image and sync up all the various parts of your online world.

Create your Avatar

And, no, I don’t mean head over to Pandora and consort with the Na’vi, I mean use a consistent image when you comment on blogs or on your profile page of various other sites. Head over to Gravatar (created by those awfully nice Automattic people that gave us WordPress) and upload a square (150 by 150 pixels should do it) image which will appear by your name when you comment on a blog. Keep this square JPG, GIF or PNG handy on your hard drive and use it every time you register for a forum or social networking or bookmarking site. That way you have a consistent visual sign that people will come to recognize and trust!

Connect your social bookmarking sites to tweet your faves

If you don’t use social bookmarking sites then you should. Sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc., are excellent ways of rank and store useful articles and to promote yourself. As with your tweets, don’t use these services to shamelessly promote only your blog posts. Use them to store articles that you find interesting and then you will earn a reputation for distributing interesting material in your niche and your blog posts will benefit.

The best thing about these sites is that you can link them up to your Twitter ID and therefore promote your post on both the social bookmarking site and Twitter at the same time. Digg and Delicious are especially good for this.

Tweet your latest blog posts and blog your latest tweets

(Bit of a no-brainer, obviously) Some people claim that blogging’s light has been faded by the more advanced social tools. However, I think macro-blogging (sorry!) can only grow from the surge of interest in Twitter’s micro-blogging service. So, to automatically tweet your latest posts use WP to Twitter. And use Twitter for WordPress to display your latest tweets on your blog.

Publish videos and photos and tweet them

With their value going from zero to over a billion dollars in under 2 years, YouTube were the understated social media success story of the last decade. Together with the more stylish Vimeo and Metacafe (which is easily synced with Facebook), video sites are a great way of promoting your brand. For photos, apart from TwitPic there’s the more popular Flickr. Once you have joined these sites remember to favorite other videos, channels, photos and photostreams so that yours are more likely to get seen. Embed your logo and/or website into the videos or images. Remember to always put your website address in your profile settings of all of these sites!

Sync up your LinkedIn and Facebook status with your Twitter feed

LinkedIn users can automatically feed their Twitter status updates to their LinkedIn status updates. Use the Twitter exporter to automatically post your Facebook status updates to Twitter.

URL shorteners

The most successful URL shortener is bit.ly, followed by ow.ly, most likely because they are newer and contain fewer characters. The least retweeted URL shorteners are the older and longer Tiny URL and TwitPic. I think Bitly is great because not only does it shorten URL and posts to Twitter it also provides great stats on the links.

Conclusion

With so many social media sites out there, all wanting your info and time, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and disheartened. As a general rule of thumb, lurk on these sites to see what they’ve got on the subjects that interest you. And then, once signed up (and linked to your main website), make sure you add articles, photos and videos of genuine interest from third parties as well as your own material.

What about you? Do you have any social media top tips that you’d like to share?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.